These 10 short documentaries bring life, vision to this year's True/False Film Fest
At each year's True/False Film Fest, the shorts programs form an underrated yet essential portion of the lineup.
These documentaries, often from either emerging filmmakers or veterans emboldened to explore a crucial concern, expand the festival's vision and introduce dozens of stories worth knowing.
This year's True/False will feature 25 shorts in addition to 31 features, packaged together with common aesthetics or themes in mind. Here's a brief glance at 10 that practically leap off the festival's listings.
"Amma ki Katha"
Director: Nehal Vyas
Run time: 21 minutes
Country: India
What you'll see: In a changing India, the filmmaker explores which national myths still hold and which don't.
"Ardent Other"
Director: Alice Brygo
Run time: 21 minutes
Country: France
What you'll see: A 3-D animated documentary, "Ardent Other" looks to use both visual distance and kinship to explore a crowd's reaction to a burning cathedral.
"Contractions"
Director: Lynne Sachs
Run time: 12 minutes
Country: United States
What you'll see: A Memphis native, accomplished filmmaker Sachs trains the camera on a women's clinic in her home city, examining the present-tense state of abortion in America.
"Four Holes"
Director: Daniela Muñoz Barroso
Run time: 20 minutes
Countries: Cuba and France
What you'll see: A retiree is determined to build his own golf course, in a film that promises to be as much about the relationship between director and subject.
"Headshot"
Director: Dominic Yarabe
Run time: 8 minutes
Country: United States
What you'll see: Yarabe explores the nature of the relationship between Black Americans and the image.
"I Am the Immaculate Conception"
Director: Frank Eli Martin
Run time: 17 minutes
Country: United Kingdom
What you'll see: Nearly 40 years after a mystical experience gripped an Irish village, those involved sift the beautiful and discomfiting implications.
"Night Audit"
Director: Ryan Ross
Run time: 15 minutes
Country: United States
What you'll see: Spend the night at a hotel, seeing one evening and its labors from fresh angles.
"Nortel"
Director: Evan Gareth Hoffman
Run time: 15 minutes
Country: Canada
What you'll see: A once-forward thinking tech company tries to adapt; or, as Hoffman put it in a director's statement, "this is a film about subordinate revenge, the superordinates who follow, and Canadian telephones."
"Roberto Baggio"
Director: Henrique Cartaxo
Run time: 7 minutes
Country: Brazil
What you'll see: What it means to look back upon a childhood highlight — in this case, the 1994 World Cup — and view it with an adult's eyes and understanding.
"Strong Grandma"
Directors: Cecilia Brown and Winslow Crane-Murdoch
Run time: 15 minutes
Country: United States
What you'll see: A 95-year-old woman looks back on bending social expectations as a weightlifter.
View the full festival lineup and see which shorts programs these films will play in at https://truefalse.org/program/films/.
Aarik Danielsen is the features and culture editor for the Tribune. Contact him at adanielsen@columbiatribune.com or by calling 573-815-1731. He's on Twitter/X @aarikdanielsen.
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Check out these 10 promising True/False Film Fest shorts
